Today around 14:00 LT Francesco called me to report a malfunction of the WI CO2 laser (the one used for DAS).
From the first attached plot it appears that the laser started exhibiting anomalous behavior around 05:00 UTC, with repeated drops in output power followed by recoveries. These oscillations became progressively more frequent in the late morning, eventually leading to several short shutdowns (1–2 minutes each). The last one, the longest, lasted from 12:04 UTC to 12:11 UTC.
After this interruption, the laser restarted by itself without any action from either me or Francesco. The issue seems to have an electrical origin.
Despite the CO2 laser being off for about 7 minutes, the interferometer remained locked, although with an evident overall worsening of the signals. It eventually unlocked at 12:42 UTC.
I followed the lock acquisition again up to CARM NULL 1F and everything went well.
We will keep monitoring the laser behaviour.